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Who could ever have predicted a stage adaptation of Milton’s lengthy, broodingly theological 17th-century poem Paradise Lost would be so much fun? OK, God could have, obviously.

In Erin Shields’s irreverent yet thoughtful take on Paradise Lost, God — deliciously played like a white-suited CEO of the family business by Marcel Jeannin — is getting fed up with his own omniscience. “I know,” he says to every bit of information that comes his way, “I know!”

It’s just one of many very good running jokes in this spectacular and fast-moving take on the Genesis story, directed with dazzling imagination and clarity by ex-Shaw Festival director Jackie Maxwell. (Following a successful run at the Stratford Festival in 2018, the production opened at Centaur Theatre last week and continues through Feb. 2.) The angelic hosts are grovelling — and sometimes grooving — goody-two-shoes, Sin and Death are characters straight out of a trailer park, and Adam and Eve are (initially, at least) dippy simpletons soppily in love.

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Most strikingly, in Shields’s radically anti-patriarchal interpretation, the Devil is a woman. (Shields previously wrote the modern classic If We Were Birds, which took on lethally toxic masculinity through the lens of ancient myth.)

It would take an actor — male or female — of considerable stature to possess Satan’s wounded, wrathful soul. And that’s just what we get with the formidable Lucy Peacock, reprising her Stratford role. With punk hairstyle, long white coat and high-hoofed boots, she teases, cajoles and tempts both Eve and the audience with slithering, winking sensuality.

The language she and the rest of the 11-strong cast speak isn’t Miltonic — Shields faithfully follows the great man’s epic narrative sweep, but mostly eschews his poetry, save for one or two greatest hits like “darkness visible” and “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” But Shields’s writing has its own musicality, building up a polyphony of moods and images. A playful note of bathos constantly undercuts Milton’s — and the Bible’s — pompous grandeur.

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There’s poetry in the design, too. Judith Bowden’s set is eerily dominated by a mound of shirts. (Maybe they’re waiting to be filled, once humanity starts all that begetting business.) A ladder alternately glows infernal red, celestial white and apple green.

Also returning to their Stratford roles are Qasim Khan and Amelia Sargisson as Adam and Eve, a wonderful double act that’s both funny and touching, as Shields spins a delightful argot from their naiveté and rudimentary attempts at philosophy.

The rest of the cast are new additions to the production. We’ve already mentioned Jeannin’s comedy chops in his role as the grumpy God the Father; he and Gabriel Lemire, as the Son, are also compelling in their heartfelt debates during which Old Testament certainties yield to a gentler approach toward erring humans. There’s good, highly physical work from Rebecca Gibian, Alain Goulem, Michelle Rambharose, Julie Tamiko Manning, Patrick Émmanuel Abellard and Jake Wilkinson, all doubling as sprightly angels and ground-down demons.

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Not everything works. I found the shambolic play put on by the angels for the instruction of Adam and Eve (a riff on the “rude mechanicals” scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) something of a hackneyed play-that-goes-wrong indulgence. And as excellent as Khan and Sargisson are, a bit less repetition in the Adam and Eve scenes would have profitably cut the near three hours of playing time.

Still, these are minor rather than cardinal sins in a show that cleverly — sometimes breathtakingly — reframes ancient notions of sin and redemption for a modern audience while always managing to find the comic in the cosmic.

AT A GLANCE

Paradise Lost continues through Feb. 2 at Centaur Theatre, 453 St-François-Xavier St. Tickets: $47 to $58; under-30s and students $33; seniors $43 to $49. Call 514-288-3161 or visit centaurtheatre.com.

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